Chet Baker
Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. (December 23, 1929 – May 13, 1988) was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player . Baker established a large following, based in part on his "matinee idol beauty, emotionally remote performances, and well publicized drug habit."Hip, the history By John Leland. Harper Collins. p. 265 He died in 1988 after falling from a second-story window of a hotel in Amsterdam, Netherlands.class=artist|id=p6049|pure_url=yes}} Allmusic Biography File:Chet_Baker_Live_(Belgium_1964)_Time_After_Time File:Autumn Leaves - Chet Baker & Paul Desmond Together File:CHET BAKER - My Funny Valentine File:Chet Baker - Rome 1956 File:Chet Baker - Tenderly Chet Baker defied the notion that there are no second acts in American lives. His career was marked by two watersheds, his days with Pacific Jazz Records and his more critically acclaimed, albeit more obscure work in the 1980s. Early days Baker was born and raised in a musical household in Yale, Oklahoma. His father was a professional guitarist. His father introduced him to brass instruments with a trombone, which was replaced with a trumpet when the trombone proved too large for him. Baker began his musical career singing in a church choir. He received some musical education at Glendale Junior High School, but left school at age 16 in 1946 to join the United States Army. He was posted to Berlin where he joined the 298th Army band. Leaving the army in 1948, he studied theory and harmony at El Camino College in Los Angeles. He dropped out in his second year, however, re-enlisting in the army in 1950. Baker became a member of the Sixth Army Band at the Presidio in San Francisco, but was soon spending time in local jazz clubs such as Bop City and the Black Hawk. Baker once again obtained a discharge from the army to pursue a career as a professional musician. Early Career Baker's earliest notable professional gigs were with saxophonist Vido Musso's band, and also with Stan Getz, though he earned much more renown in when he was chosen by Charlie Parker to play for a series of West Coast engagements.Gordon, R.: Jazz West Coast, page 72. Quartet Books, 1986. Baker joined the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, which was an instant phenomenon. Several things made the Mulligan/Baker group special, the most prominent being the interplay between Mulligan's bari sax and Baker's trumpet. Rather than playing identical melody lines in unison like giants Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the two would complement each other's playing with contrapuntal touches, and it often seemed as if they had telepathy in anticipating what the other was going to play next. The Quartet's version of " My Funny Valentine", featuring a memorable Baker solo, was a major hit, and became a song which Baker performed as a personal trademark for many years thereafter. The Quartet found success quickly, but lost it just as quickly. Mulligan's arrest and imprisonment on drug charges shortened the band's fame and life to less than a year. In , Pacific Jazz released Chet Baker Sings, a record that increased his profile and added Vocalist to his resumé, but alienated traditional jazz fans. Baker formed quartets with Russ Freeman in 1953-54 with bassists Carson Smith, Joe Mondragon, and Jimmy Bond. He worked with drummers Shelly Manne, Larry Bunker, and Bob Neel. The quartet was successful in their three live sets in 1954. In that year, Baker won the Downbeat Jazz Poll. His rugged, chiseled features opened the door to the silver screen. Baker made his acting debut in the film Hell's Horizon, released in the Fall of 1955. He declined an offer of a studio contract, preferring life on the road as a musician. Over the next few years, Baker fronted his own combos, including a 1955 quintet featuring Francy Boland, where he combined playing trumpet and singing. He became an icon of the West Coast "cool school" of jazz, being aided by his good looks and, to some degree in racially polarized America, his race. Most of the top jazz musicians of the day in BeBop and other jazz scenes were black, and post Big-Band jazz movements tended to be moves away from the strictures of white European concert band music that had merged with Jazz from the 1920s to the end of the Big Band Era in the 1950s. Baker's talent was equal in stature, although his sound came from a musical perspective that would meld into the jazz mainstream more in later years. Baker also resisted the stampede of Jazz musicians following the money into the early days of Rock and Roll, which was brass and woodwind heavy before the advent of the electric guitar and the amplifier. Baker's recording, released for the first time in its entirety in 1989 as The Route, with Art Pepper helped further the West Coast jazz sound and became a staple of cool jazz. Drug addiction and decline Like many Jazz musicians of his day, Baker had been using heroin since the 1950s. His musical career declined as a result. At times, Baker pawned his instruments for money to maintain his drug habit. In the early 1960s, he served more than a year in prison in Italy on drug charges. He was later expelled from both West Germany and the UK for drug-related offenses. Baker was eventually deported from West Germany to the United States after running afoul of the law there a second time. He settled in Milpitas, California where he played music in San Jose and San Francisco between short jail terms served for prescription fraud. In 1966, Baker was severely beaten (allegedly while attempting to buy drugs) after a gig in San Francisco, sustaining severe cuts on the lips and broken front teeth, which ruined his embouchure. Accounts of the incident vary, largely because of Baker's lack of reliable testimony on the matter. From that time on, he had to learn to play with dentures. Between 1966 and 1974, Baker mostly played flugelhorn and recorded music that could mostly be classified as West Coast Jazz. Later Career Baker developed a new embouchure due to his dentures. He returned to the straight-ahead jazz that began his career, relocating to New York City where he began performing and recording again, notably with guitarist Jim Hall. Later in the 1970s, Baker returned to Europe where he was assisted by his friend Diane Vavra who took care of his personal needs and otherwise helped him during his recording and performance dates. From 1978 until his death, Baker resided and played almost exclusively in Europe, returning to the USA roughly once per year for a few performance dates. Most of the work in the 1970s that paid well was overseas, as Rock-and-Roll had become the dominant footprint in American music. From 1978 to 1988 was Baker's most prolific era as a recording artist. However, his extensive output is strewn across numerous, mostly small European labels. None of these recordings ever reached a wider audience, even though many of them were well-received by critics, who maintain that this was probably Baker's most mature and most rewarding phase. Of particular importance are Baker's quartet featuring the pianist Phil Markowitz (1978–80) and his trio with guitarist Philip Catherine and bassist Jean-Louis Rassinfosse (1983–85). He also toured with saxophonist Stan Getz during this period. In 1983, British singer Elvis Costello, a longtime fan of Baker, hired the trumpeter to play a solo on his song "Shipbuilding", from the album Punch the Clock. The song was a top 40 hit in the UK, exposed Baker's music to a new audience, and opened the door to perform with other jazz-inspired rockers like Van Morrison. Baker would work on several more Costello gigs, including a collaboration on "A Fool to Want You] which both artists recorded. Later, Baker often featured Costello's song "Almost Blue" (inspired by Baker's version of "The Thrill Is Gone") in his live sets He also recorded the song on Let's Get Lost, a documentary film about his life. The video material recorded by Japanese television during Baker's tour in Japan showed a man whose face looked much older than he was, the toll of a life of heavy drug and alcohol use. However, his trumpet playing was alert, lively and inspired. Fans and critics alike agree that the live album Chet Baker in Tokyo, recorded less than a year before his death and released posthumously, ranks among his very best. "Silent Nights", another critically acclaimed release, Baker's only recording of Christmas music, was recorded with Christopher Mason in New Orleans in and released in 1987. Death At about 3:00 am on May 13, , Baker was found dead on Prins Hendrikkade street, near Zeedijk, below his second-story room (Room 210) of the Hotel Prins Hendrik in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with serious wounds to his head. Heroin and cocaine were found in his hotel room. An autopsy also found these drugs in his body. There was no evidence of a struggle, and the death was ruled an accident. Baker's body was brought home for interment in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California, where many other famous jazz musicians are buried. A plaque outside the Hotel Prins Hendrik in Amsterdam now memorializes him. Legacy As much as Chet Baker's life was about the art of music, his life has inspired art and words in music, fine art, theater and film. A memorial statue was erected by fan Bob Hager in front of the Prins Hendrick Hotel where Baker died, but it was not a city-sanctioned work and it was removed. In its place the Hotel placed a plaque commissioned by Hager in front of the hotel.Chet Baker Memorial http://members.home.nl/chetbaker/Chet.Baker.Memorial.frame.htm Jeroen de Valk has written a biography of Baker which is available in several languages: Chet Baker: His Life and Music is the English translation of Chet Baker: Herinneringen aan een lyrisch trompettist (remembrance of a lyrical trumpet player) a Dutch publication (updated and expanded in ),http://www.jeroendevalk.nl/ and it is also published in Japan and Germany. James Gavin has also written a biography: Deep In A Dream — The Long Night of Chet Baker. Baker's "lost memoirs" are available in the book As Though I Had Wings, which includes an introduction by Carol Baker. Baker was immortalized by the photographer William Claxton in his book Young Chet: The Young Chet Baker. An Academy Award-nominated 1988 documentary about Baker, Let's Get Lost, portrays him as a cultural icon of the 1950s, but juxtaposes this with his later image as a drug addict. The film, directed by fashion photographer Bruce Weber, was shot in black-and-white and includes a series of interviews with friends, family, including his three children by third wife Carol Baker, associates and lovers, interspersed with film from Baker's earlier life, and with interviews with Chet from his last years. Time After Time: The Chet Baker Project, written by playwright James O'Reilly, toured Canada in 2001 to much acclaim.TIME AFTER TIME: THE CHET BAKER PROJECT.(Review) (theater review) | Variety | Find Articles at BNET.com The musical play Chet Baker - Speedball, explores aspects of his life and music, and was premiered in London at the Oval House Theatre in February , with further development of the script and performances leading to its performance at the 606 Club in the London Jazz Festival of November 2007. Baker was reportedly the inspiration for the character Chad Bixby, played by Robert Wagner in the film All the Fine Young Cannibals. Another film, to be titled Prince of Cool, about Baker's life, was cancelled as of January 2008.MTV Movies Blog » Josh Hartnett Won’t Be Getting Jazzed For ‘Cool’ Chet Baker Flick In May, 2008, an Audio-Visual performance The Chet Baker Story with British jazz-musician Gerard Presencer & his band, trumpeter-newcomer Julian Wasserfuhr and saxophonist Allan Praskin was performed at the T-Mobile Forum in Bonn, Germany, with readings by actor Uwe Ochsenknecht. Using one of Europe’s biggest indoor-LED-screens the performance illustrated readings and songs with biographical impressions, twelve self-contained visual-clips and Live VJing pieces. In cooperation with Matthias Gerding, Eva Kehl, Nando Nkrumah, the show was produced bythe Academy Of Media Arts Köln and hosted by Infocom Music GmbH and T-Mobile. http://www.koenigm.com/wordpress/?cat=7&paged=2 *In 1987 inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame. *In 1989 elected to Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame by that magazine's Critics Poll *In 2005 Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry and the Oklahoma House of Representatives proclaimed July 2 as “Chet Baker Day”. *A group of musicians from Northern Norway performed a 'Chet Baker Tribute' at the Jazz Utsav in Bandra, Mumbai. *Wordpress 2.8 version, released on 10 June 2009, has been called "Baker" in honor of the trumpeter. *Chet Baker Foundation * * * Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Baker, Chet Category:Composers - Baker,Chet Category:2001 Category:2007 Category:2008 1954 Category:1955 Category:1953 Category:1966 Category:1974 Category:1978 Category:1988 Category:1983 Category:1987 singer 1951 1952 Category:BeBop 1953 1955 1956 1966 1974 1978 1988 1983 1987 1986 2007 1960 Category:Musicians from Oklahoma Category:Inglewood Park Cemetery Category:SteepleChase Records - Artists Category:Columbia Records - Artists Category:Enja Records - Artists Category:Prestige Records - Artists Category:Timeless Records - Artists Category:EmArcy Records - Artists Category:Verve Records - Artists Category:Galaxy Records - Artists Category:Riverside Records - Artists Category:Baker, Chet Category:Trumpeters Category:Pacific Jazz Records - Artists Category:Births 1929 Category:Deaths 1988